Lives on the Line: How the Philippines became the World's Call Center Capital

Dial just about any toll-free number and chances are you'll be talking to a Filipino. In fact, around the year 2005, the country overtook India as the world's "voice capital." Lives on the Line argues that this has nothing to do with wages or accents. Rather, as Jeffrey J. Sallaz shows, there is a perfect match between offshored call centers and educated young Filipinos. For Filipina women and gay Filipinos in particular, call centers are veritable lifelines, and their lives tell us much about contemporary capitalism and the future of work.

Author: Sallaz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 08/14/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780190630669

About the Author
Jeffrey J. Sallaz is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. He is an ethnographer of work who has performed fieldwork in automobile factories, casinos, and call centers. For the present project, he spent two years doing fieldwork in the Philippines and the United States.